Old

 

On Page 138 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer has four entries which I quote and then comment on.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          268

 

To the old, the new is usually bad news.”

 

My response: I would say that naturally, the old—but not only the old, but the middle-aged and young—regard the new as bad news. We are naturally conservative in a reactionary, crabbed, stunted way; we are superstitious and wary of anything new and different.

 

When the typical, elderly individuator has spent a lifetime coasting, getting by, so she never transcended her natural fear of and aversion to receiving incoming new ideas with warmth and enthusiasm, it is understandable that most old people, nonindividuators and groupists, would regard the new as bad news.

 

On the other hand, the new is not necessarily good news; it could be bad news, so it is best to suspend judgment until one understands what has just arrived on one’s doorstep.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          269

 

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.”

 

My response: Amen.

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          270

 

Widespread dissipation is the result rather than the cause of social decadence.”

 

My response: This seems intuitively correct to me, once one assumes that each citizen must decide for herself to be a moral person, to live well, temperately, to raise a family and make a contribution back to God and society.

 

When the majority of people no longer worship the god of their culture, and lose faith in the primary potency of their cultural story, the glue that holds their social order together, widespread personal dissipation is the product of social decay triggered by individual irresponsibility and settling for lives of pleasure, ease and poverty, rather than working hard to build a life for oneself, and, secondarily, for society.         

 

 

 

Hoffer: “          271

 

Wasting ourselves is sometimes a way of camouflaging our worthlessness: we hereby maintain the fiction that there was aught worth wasting.”

 

My response: I sound like a broken record: that there are worthless people but that is not their genetic destiny, but a complex but clearly identifiable pattern of self-attacking, a voluntary selection. They are worthless because they neither believe in themselves, love themselves, like themselves or are willing to work on their fallen natures so they can live admirable lives as holy, virtuous maverizers in the service of the Good Spirits.